After this year’s Pirate Summit we decided to launch Exec I/O, a new event format to connect startup founders with corporate executives. There are five main reasons we think this makes a lot of sense:

There is a very high demand from corporates to somehow participate in the startup hype. However, most have no idea what and how to do it. Others start to build the 1.452nd startup accelerator.

There is a lot of value in startup culture and startup innovation methods. Corporates should know and incorporate what fits for them.

Startups at a certain stage are looking for partnerships. A cooperation with a corporate often makes a lot of sense.

Corporates are a likely exit channel for startups.

And finally: There just aren’t any events that focus on connecting (solely) corporate with startup executives.

The first event will be on 2 December in Düsseldorf. We are very happy that international law-firm Orrick will host the event. Top notch speakers such as Jörg Sievert (Managing Director, SAP Ventures), Frank Thelen (Managing Director, doo) or Christian Blume (CEO, Cleverbridge) will speak at the event. You can find the full list of speakers here. More will be added shortly.

The event is invitation only. You can apply here. If you enter “Lean Entrepreneur” as a referral code you will get 15% off the normal ticket price.